Lucifer’s Place in Journalism – Moses Harman, 10/16/1902

Republished from our predecessor publication Lucifer the Light Bearer

A brief dispute between M.D. and the Founder

? – M.D.
That it requires the reading of more than one copy to enable minds of even more than average intelligence to fully
grasp the aim and purpose of Lucifer is well illustrated in the following letter: “I have been a reader of your paper for
about a year and have scarcely known until lately what reason could be given for its existence. It appears to me
now to have a reason for being. It fills a niche in the literature of Love, or the Sex-Emotion. Love, as observed in
mankind and the lower animals, presents many variant phases: horses and cattle are gregarious and polygamous;
the stallion and the bull have their harems; birds (wild ones) usually are monogamous, while domestic fowl are
polygamous; man, in his highest development, is monogamous; the immortals, the angels, are, so far as we may
know, sexless. Between these extremes are all gradations and varieties. You contend for the right of every creature
to live its own life in its own way and according to its own nature, but you more particularly lay stress upon freedom
in sexual matters. This is right and should be contended for by all right-minded people. The expressions of love are
as various as the combinations which form character. Krafft-Ebing has rendered invaluable service to mankind by
his great classical work Psychopathia Sexualis, in which he classifies the varieties of sexual perversion, and you
are doing a good work in aiding to classify sexual defectives of another kind, viz.: those in whom good has failed to
develop and mature typically. For these, Free Love or Selective Variety is essential, and no law of man should vex
or interfere with their natural-abnormal development. For the typical, normal, developed man and woman, monogamy
is natural and right, and for such a one to practice the doctrines you teach would be a degradation; but for the class
I have mentioned, whose development has not yet reached the monogamous ideal, such a monogamous sex-life
forced upon them is like attempting to teach trigonometry to a child who knows not algebra. If monogamous unions
are forced upon this class by law, it becomes unendurable to them and is tyranny. Such tyranny exists today and
must exist so long as our present marriage laws prevail. I wish you success in your fight against this tyranny.
More power to your pen is my wish for you.”

Reply – Moses Harman

Among the various avocations of modern life, certainly there are none that should enable men and women to better
understand and fully appreciate the worth and necessity of Lucifer’s mission and Lucifer’s work than that of the physician.
The facts—the stern, the inexorable facts—that daily come under the observation of the intelligent doctor and nurse
of the sick must force the conviction that Whitman was right when he said, “Sex contains all,” and that Grant Allen’s
elaborate statement concerning the importance of the right use and understanding of the much-despised, much
-discredited, ignored, and slighted sex nature stamps him a true philosopher as well as a true philanthropist. Yes,
Lucifer “fills a niche”—occupies a department in the field of journalism—that is filled or occupied by no other journal,
so far as I know. And that niche, that department, it cannot be too often repeated and brought home to the heart,
mind, and conscience of all, is the most vitally important, the most fearfully, most tremendously important of all the
departments of journalistic endeavor to which any human being can possibly devote his or her time and energies.
But while devoting most of our time and space to the cultivation and investigation of the most important of all the
departments of human ethics, we do not think it best to exclude altogether the closely related departments called
economics, finance, or even politics and religion, in the non-partisan and non-sectarian sense. In fact, Lucifer aims
to deal with the great problem of human life on earth, neglecting no department, no study, that is necessary to the
right solution and the right understanding of that problem, giving first place and chief space, as already said, to the
investigations and studies that seem to us most vitally important, as well as most neglected and most dangerously
misunderstood and misrepresented. In one important particular, however, our correspondent seems to be still unable,
after a year’s reading, to grasp the full meaning, the central idea, of Lucifer’s aim and purpose.

His language very plainly shows that he thinks we make a specialty of teaching the doctrine known as “Selective Variety,”
sometimes also called “Free Love” by those who have paid but little attention to the subject. If our “M.D.” had read more
carefully the editorials that appear from time to time, he would have seen that Lucifer’s aim is to furnish a free platform
to all earnest seekers for truth in regard to the right relation of the sexes. In order to get the whole of truth, we recognize
that all sides must be heard. If more of Lucifer’s writers advocate Selective Variety than any other form or method of
associative sex life, it is probably because most of our correspondents believe that Selective Variety is better than
monogamy, at least for the present imperfect or transitional stage of human development. Man, or the genus Homo, is
believed by evolutionists to be the outgrowth, the culmination, the embodiment of all the forms of animal life below him,
and that all characteristics, habits, peculiarities, and endowments of these lower forms of life are to be found in him. If
this be true, then it should not be considered strange or wonderful that we find honest and sincere monogamists,
polygamists, Selective Varietists, promiscuists (if this term be allowable), and also opposers of all sex life and sex
expression among the men and women of our acquaintance. Admitting, for the sake of argument, that “monogamy
is natural and right for the typical, normal, developed man and woman,” as “An M.D.” says, Lucifer still maintains
that legal interference and legal control are not the best ways to bring the undeveloped and the abnormal up to the
highest or typical plane. Liberty of thought, of speech, and of non-invasive action is a much better cure for errors of
opinion and of conduct than meddlesome interference by church or state authority. “The cure for the evils of liberty
[or of abnormality] is more liberty.”